by Ryan Burnett
I watched as one by one the student’s and Professor Yodson began their VRN session. All of the occupants of the class room adopted close eyed and smooth faced expressions; their consciousness temporarily separated from their environment. As quietly as I could (which turned out to be not very quiet at all once you factored in the chiming clinks of my jewelry and my still slightly out of breath breathing) I sat down my purse and made one more brief attempt to straighten my clothes before I too closed my eyes and sought that virtual disconnect that closed off my body but opened up my mind.
The beauty and serenity of my virtual space was alluring because of its simplicity. No family to misunderstand me, no boys to notice or ignore me, no women to play the judging game, not even any of my cats with their endless cravings for my attention. Only a clear blue sky that stretched out as far as I cared to stretch my perception, and green gas under my feet. My appearance here was almost identical to my real self. A semi loose fitting shirt of synthetic cloth, a short skirt over black leggings, and an array of silver earrings, bangles, rings, and necklaces carefully selected so as to appear chosen at random. My long black hair was no longer tied in a ponytail though, here I allowed it blow free seeing as how in a virtual environment the possibility of it continuously getting in my eyes was a non-issue.
Soon I was going to upgrade my data package and I was so eager to see what details my mind would independently create, I loved letting my subconscious create for me instead of intentionally willing things to manifest. Although secretly I held out a hope for the sound of songbirds (although I was fairly certain I didn’t want any of the distracting little critters to actually appear) I wasn’t certain what it was that my subconscious truly desired and I kinda liked that too. As I came fully into the world of virtual reality, I realized that I didn’t really have time to enjoy my solitude or day dream about future purchases; I turned my head and whispered “Sync” to the aerial ocean above.
The landscape (and the lack thereof) around me shimmered and grew brighter for a second as my VRN interfaced with the class’s session that was already in progress. As soon as my eyes had adjusted to the brightness, a process which had nothing to do with light entering my eyes cornea, I noticed that the grass underneath my feet had become host to a large group of human shaped shadows gathered in a circle around a central shadow that was larger and darker than the rest. The shadow spoke in a voice that sounded as if it had been expertly aged in an oak barrel, “Ok class what am I holding in my hand?” the shadow held out its hand and on the patch of ground directly over it a slab of stone pushed through the earth and the shadow that it casts created a sundial which only required a glance for me to have a detailed understanding of the current time of day accurate down to the nanosecond. One of the shadows surrounding the central shadow raised its hand, “You’re holding an hourglass!” another chimed in by saying “What? No way, he’s holding one of those digital display timepieces” a pretty high pitched voice followed with “Huh? Listen guys I know Cartier when I see it.” The central shadow spoke again, louder this time, in order to keep the others from being derailed by their misunderstandings and bickering “Why don’t you give them the answer Angela?”
Despite not sleeping in the last 48 hours, the answer came easily as if my mind had complete rest and clarity. “Sure thing, Professor. What you’re “holding” is a time keeping program similar to any clock display on a computer screen or hologram. Our minds are just interpreting it differently according to our subconscious and VRN capabilities. What you perceive yourself holding is likely very different than what I or anyone else sees but the objects that we do see will most likely be functionally the same. “ The central shadow shifted so that it more clearly showed the profile of Professor Avid Yodson professor and lecturer for the University’s Intro to Applied Neuro-Engineering. “Affirmative Angela, as a matter of fact what I perceive myself to be holding right now is a silver pocket watch, but all of your answers are equally correct. In the world of neuro-engineering what we “see” is secondary to what things “do”. Form is fluid and subjective but function still bears the same absolute objective rigidity that we are accustomed to in the real world.
Professor Yodson’s shadowy avatar turned to me before saying, “I suppose nearly tardy assistance is acceptable as long as it is so consistently competent.” I couldn’t help but smile at the compliment embedded within the reprimand. The professor had an odd humor about him that often took others by surprise. I had always found the way his mind worked extremely intriguing, which was part of the reason why I always pushed myself to make it to every single one of his lectures and perform all the TA duties necessary without a single flaw, even if I had to occasionally show up half brain dead from exhaustion and five minutes late.
I sat in the digital grass and crossed my legs, while listening to the sound of the lecture and the students struggling to grasp the most rudimentary concepts of how VRN’s interfaced with each other. I had heard this course of speech before, but I was more than content to listen once more about how in some ways a concept could be more meaningful than a concrete reality. Yodson’s melodious shadow voice soon overpowered the remaining adrenaline from the rush to get to the classroom on time, slowly but surely the siren song of sleep swept over my mind…
******************************************
I awoke to the crack of ruler against desk. It was a bit of a shock finding myself back in the classroom and not my mental hermitage but once the haze had cleared a little I remember the brainwave pattern shift caused by sleep invariably caused a VRN to shut down. There was another “thwack!” and I saw Professor Yodson was at the other end of the room making a racket as he slammed a ruler against a desk again.
I yawned and stretched my arms before asking him, “So professor, what are you up to? Testing the durability of our teaching materials?” with a sleepy yet sarcastic grin on my face. He looked up and replied, “No Angela, I am actually trying to wake my aide in hopes that she has acquired enough beauty sleep and is now able and willing to provide me with the graded homework from last week”. Hurriedly I dug through my purse, wondering exactly how long I had been asleep for. Evidently long enough for Professor Yodson to adjust the settings on his chroma-cloth jacket to slate gray. Bringing my attention to the task at hand I started to sort through my many thumb drives until I found the correct one and handed it to Professor Yodson. He smiled warmly as he accepted the device from me.
“Very good Angela, now if I’m not mistaken you are almost late for your other job, no?..I won’t make a fuss because you’ve always been a superb attendant, but I am beginning to fear that you are burning the candle at both ends.”
“What an old expression, I can’t remember the last time I even saw a candle and if I did have one I wouldn’t burn it at both ends I’d sell it and fill my fridge with something better than slab noodles and mustard.” After a nap my personality tends to show a bit more, I guess I have to be a little rested before I can be feisty.
Yodson smiled at my remark and added “I wouldn’t blame you… there could definitely be some more meat on those bones.” I squeaked my agreement before extending my arms in an attempt to stretch out my back and neck a bit. Sleeping at the desk had left me with a few lingering aches. I noticed professor Yodson, looking at me his usually jovial face much more solemn now as if he had remembered something better left forgotten. Ever since my father had passed away he had been a source of support for me, but he did have a tendency to be a little too overprotective.
“How is the neural mapping research project going? Making any progress?” Professor Yodson asked.
“It’s going well, even though making real headway is a pain. Each time we find a neural path to the primary visual cortex that may be compatible with VRN applications it leads to a dead end….and a million other potential neural pathways to explore. Sometimes it’s like were facing an impossible task with no possible end…..but that’s how a lot of things look at the beginning right? For all I k
now we could get lucky any day now and I’ll be on my way to worldwide conferences…in between shopping sprees in Paris of course. “I joked trying to put the mood a little bit more at ease.
“Of course. Of course…” Yodson intoned mildly amused by my attempt at levity. “ I understand VirtuWorld has been more than generous with their funding…I guess… my concern is that I know companies like that can sometimes use information in…well…erm..unforeseen ways. Tyra told me earlier that they had asked that the neuro-map data from your own VRN and brain scans were to be used as part of your dataset and I would just like to caution you like I cautioned her. Be very careful with who sees that information and where it goes, read all the fine print on anything you sign, and lastly…”
“Tell you if anything seems fishy?” I finished for him.
“Yes quite…” he finished as he finally pocketed the thumb drive that I had given to him.
“Well hurry along, I have kept you long enough. Keep me apprised of your team’s progress it is an exciting opportunity you youngsters have in front of you. Try to get some sleep so that you can make the most of it. I have great faith in you Angela, a girl with a job neuroengineering for VirtuWorld need not be famous in order to enjoy a Parisian shopping excursion.” He finished as he turned around and began to walk towards his desk.
“Thanks Professor.” I replied. I waved goodbye as I trekked away from the sprawling buildings of the university campus towards the monorail system that would carry me downtown. I mostly zoned out on the ride over; lost to the motion of the public transit while tuning out the random chatter of my fellow riders. A newscast was playing on one of the monorail’s video screens. Talking heads announced another missing person’s case. Sometimes I wished that they would stop playing the news so often on the public screens….it was just always so depressing.
It was just before 8pm when I arrived at Club Pangea. As a member of the staff I could avoid the “early early” crowd of club-kids and the flashy theatrics of the entrance displays and go in via the much more private and heavily secured back door which had its own crew of large bouncers to escort staff to and from the premises. The hallway connected to the back entrance was surprisingly clean, well lit, and quiet in contrast to the rest of the club. These hallways actually reminded me a little of the university, except for the muffled penetrating rhythmic bass of the music that was inescapable for anyone inside the building. I stopped briefly in the employee bathroom to touch up what little makeup I wore and to change into the spare shirt I had in the employee locker rooms near the back lounge.
The club was one of many ….slightly more reputable than some, a good deal less reputable than others. It was mostly a place for people who had illegally modified VRNs to listen to strange music as they zapped the pleasure centers of their brain into charred lumps of pork rinds. That had nothing to do with me though, my job was simple, easy, and 100% legal. All I had to worry about was just showing up on time, staying sober, and using the surveillance room’s monitoring system to keep an eye out for anyone about to die or do something stupid…”stupid” of course being a relative term.
The first 4 hours of my shift were normal, there was a fight which led to a few party goers being forcibly ejected with some new bruises but that was more routine than a night spent in absolute peace. The whole night would have quickly been lost in the restless struggle of work and school if I hadn’t of seen him. I couldn’t put a name to the face but I remember seeing him when our research team had met with the grant delegation from VirtuWorld…and a few times after that whenever we had gone to the corporate headquarters to tour the facilities and submit progress reports. He had never done anything overtly note-worthy but the mere fact that he had access to the research floor and always seemed to be wearing a lifeless, nondescript black suit had made him stick out in my mind. His dark hair was cleanly cut and his 6 foot 4 inch frame was easy to spot no matter what the setting. I remembered weeks before when I had mentioned that something about him struck me as being “off” to my lab partner’s …but Tyra had only said that she thought he was cute, and Tommy merely laughed and asked if I had been getting enough sleep.
This was different though, it wasn’t just merely “off” it was completely out of place. My mind began to race as my instincts screamed TROUBLE at me as loud as they possibly could. My hunches had an uncanny habit of being right about people. Others liked to call it superstition or dumb luck but I refused to listen to them. A part of me had known something was wrong the day my dad died even though he was miles and miles away, and I had experienced a similar sensation the day I had got into that car accident….I had learned to listen to my gut the hard way, and I think it’s because I listened that I was the only security personnel at Club Pangea to hold the monitoring position for longer than two months. The hours were abysmal, and the work could get very dull (especially when you’ve seen the same holographic pattern on an empty dance floor morph for the trillionth time) but the pay was going to let me graduate and finish my research program without any student debt. Nothing happened on my watch without me knowing about it and since I had started violent incidents had decreased by over 40% (unless you counted incidents that took place in the club parking lot).
My mind raced as I used the monitoring system to get a closer look at the man in the black suit. I began to obsess over what he could possibly want? Did he even know I worked here? Was he sent to make sure that someone working on a VirtuWorld project wasn’t associated with a “seedy” club like this? How would he have possibly found out…Tyra, Tommy, and Yodson would never have ratted me out... I briefly considered abandoning my post before he made his way to the back so that maybe I could play innocent if he came and questioned me at the lab tomorrow, but the more I looked the more I realized he wasn’t searching for me….or anyone else for that matter. He was waiting for someone.
I continued to watch as he met who he had been presumably waiting for. Two men took seats next to him at the bar and immediately started a conversation with him. One of the two men appeared to be extremely drunk, while the other…well he seemed less drunk than the first but he also seemed to have a decidedly less firm purchase on his barstool. The differences between the tall man with the suit and the two sitting at the bar were immediately apparent. The VirtuWorld delegate was all business and even through the chaos of colors that swirled in the club all around the mismatched trio it was easy for me to see that he was become frustrated by the antics of his acquaintances.
I zoomed the camera in closer letting my curiosity get the better of me; all while wondering in the back of my mind how much joy I actually got from the voyeuristic nature of my job. I tried to adjust the monitoring equipment to make sure our cameras got a clear view of their lips for later analysis. I trained a secondary camera on the three to see them from another angle and managed to catch sight of an envelope being passed under the table. It wasn’t the first time I had caught such an exchange on film and it most certainly wouldn’t be the last…but at least now I had some ammo in my arsenal if by some freaky coincidence the VirtuWorld personnel ever did have a problem with my employment here. It wasn’t long before my impish self-assured smile vanished into vapor, and the unmistakable din of gun shots filled my ears. Three of the four cameras in the Utopia room returned nothing but static. The fourth showed a crazed confusion of rushing bodies. I pressed the red emergency button under my desk seconds before the lights went out and all the screens turned dark. Alone in the powerless room I felt my way towards the doorway guided by the red glow of the emergency exit lights; a panicked mantra echoing through my thoughts.
“The truth is the truth; and I am its witness,
Witness to the light and the dark. Positive and the negative,
See the world reflected through my eyes,
And through my sight we are all uplifted”
Chapter 4
Marcus
22:06:03
I received another message from Rob around 10 pm that said “Almost
read. Be peppered”. It was a message which I had puzzled over for a few moments until I remembered just how rapidly his spelling could deteriorate after a few shots. I knew from experience that to Rob the distinction between business and pleasure was a theoretical one at best; a thin gray line on a murky canvas that wobbled as it wove its course. To Rob the moment a job stopped being fun was the moment he started looking for escape routes and loopholes…. but on the flipside of the coin I had never seen someone make a business opportunity out of a party the way Rob could. According to him a bout of binge drinking was the best way to start a job and the best way to end it. The exasperating part of it all was that while I could get frustrated at his methods I never had good cause to argue with his results.
When I thought about the jobs we had done over the years (and the money that had come and gone) I honestly did not know whether I should smile or wince. I read the message one more time muttering the words under my breath, “Almost read. Be peppered” and figured that either it was time to greet my longtime friend with the alcohol induced dyslexia or it was time to cover myself in spice.
Before getting the message, I had passed the day in crowded solitude; keeping to myself as I navigated through Arc city while in the process of preparing for the night; trying to regain some semblance of normalcy. It had been too long since I had a truly compelling reason to get myself together. At this point a shower, a subtle spray of cologne, and a trim at the barber had a transformative effect on me. After a slump like this, these simple actions were more than just hygiene. They were a ritual and after all was said and done, like a phoenix rising from an ashtray I felt like I had the drop on the whole wide world. I tried to lock on to this feeling and carry it with me as long as I possibly could.
